This invention relates generally to optical tracking systems. Increased data storage capacity and retrieval performance is required of commercially viable mass storage devices and media, such as linear magnetic tape. Linear magnetic tape systems, for example, have moved toward multi-head, multi-channel fixed head structures with narrowed recording gaps and track widths. Such narrow recording heads allow many linear tracks to be formed on a tape medium of predetermined width, such as one-half inch width tape. Tape substrates arc also being made thinner, with increased tape lengths being made possible in smaller diameter reels.
Because of a relatively high linear tape velocity and because tape substrates continue to be made thinner and thinner, guiding tape past a tape head structure, such as a magnetic recording head, along an accurate invariant linear path is difficult and can lead to errors in reading and writing to the tape. One such error is referred to as “lateral tape motion,” commonly referred to as LTM. LTM refers to the lateral motion of the tape as it travels across the magnetic recording head and is inherent in mechanical transport systems such as linear magnetic tape systems. LTM is a source of tracking errors in linear tape recording systems.